


Recondition

by aqhrodites



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Don't believe the summary, Gen, Not What It Looks Like, Reader-Insert, Short & Sweet, because Scott suffers enough already, it's more of a drabble, kind of written for a friend that's a bit of a, let's be real, set after X-Men Apocalypse, this isn't sad like it appears, well not really maybe, with everyone's favorite smartass with laser eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 21:33:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10448031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqhrodites/pseuds/aqhrodites
Summary: Nine months after winning a battle against the apocalypse, Scott still feels shame. He’s shameful because that’s the overwhelming emotion he feels with these clunky, ruby shades that might as well be glued to his face like a shining, directing beacon that screams "misfit."Shame is the sweeping, high cheekbones, chapped lips, and the open-jaw look of alarm that is plastered on the girl in the knee-lengthed red sundress. She is the girl he never got to reconcile or take on a date, a past classmate of his, and who understandably looks like she’s looking at a ghost. Then her expression changes to—relief? Happiness? Something weird? He blinks in surprise as her arms are thrown around his neck in a hug.She smiles, asks attentively how he has been, completely ignoring the taller, stockier blonde nearby—the same one Scott blasted against the school's bathroom sink when his powers emerged.She smiles. It’s all blissfully nostalgic and it’s reminiscent.Scott wishes he hadn’t come at all.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hawkqirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkqirl/gifts).



* * *

 

Scott’s life should have ended at sixteen.

In many ways it does.

* * *

People hate him.

Well, not exactly  _hate_  but it’s close enough, he guesses.

They call him a coward, a flake, a braggart, and they send flying paper airplanes and wads of torn, crumpled notebook pages with notes scrawled inside—words extra scathing, jibes extra offensive—like they think he’s actually capable of succumbing to an emotion as selfish as  _shame_.

He sports name brand jackets and Ray-bands and combs his hair in the style of Emilio Estevez. He gives clap-backs as acidic-green and vitriolic as a sharpened tack, and he doesn’t put his chin down, doesn’t let his shoulders slacken, because he’s too young and has a head as thick as an 80s phone book and he’s  _sure_ —he’s sure of the winding curve of his jawline, of flawless regulations of his in-style dress code, of his security and confidence, his high scores posted in countless arcade games across town, and the compilations of scholarship applications his mother has piled up for him that he’ll only grin and scoff at. He’s sure that he’s got everything under control, that it’s all smooth sailing from now on, that nothing in this universe could  _possibly_  come and over turn his little boat-ship of stability.

Scott Summers has pride that emulates lions that haven’t fought a war yet.

Scott’s certain, secure, and confident.

And why should he be anything but?

* * *

Scott can almost  _pinpoint_  when his life ended.

It’s easy enough: spring of ‘83, someplace between home and Winchester, New York. He had just turned sixteen. He just received his driver’s license, just gotten his brother, Alex, back home. Had gotten all passing grades on his midterm exams, just started getting the attention of that pretty girl in his class, the one with long ebony hair and chestnut-brown skin. Everything just started to be  _comfortable_. It could have been perfect. It  _had_  been, until—

Alex dies, and everything begins to fade.

Unfortunately too close in a house bomb, the reporters say. Nothing else. Not a face, not a name, just a general ambiguous tagline.

_“An unfortunate demise.”_

_“There have been only a handful of injuries and two counted deaths.”_

Alex leaves, and everything begins to collapse.

Loneliness settles in first, makes a home in the swell of Scott’s gut. Grief and despair coil inside the clawed out wounds of the open vacancy his brother had left. At the funeral, it’s a closed casket, not having a body to bury, and Scott is given a few hollow regards, and when it ends he leaves for the car and slams the doors shut and the sounds of robins and jaybirds are like echoes, like songs of long forsaken guardian angels, like laughter. He ignores the remarks about his new glasses and turns away from questions. His parents no longer look him in the eye.

Alex disappears, and everything begins to splinter.

Words like  _permanent_  and  _forever_  suddenly turn pallid and sour to Scott’s ears. He doesn’t like saying it either—the assuring meanings had been snatched from him fearfully quick that it leaves a jarring, sonorous thud of awakening in the forefront of his mind now. Because he remembers how  _normal_  and  _promising_  had careened into becoming  _population disease_  and  _mutee_ ; his new reality jerking on the breaks and slamming him in the face at breakneck speed. Because he hears mutant and immediately thinks  _caution_ , and he has to shake his head, and stare at the world in a permanent imperial-red wash and carry this new reality like a torch dipped in kerosene, like the scorched, torn marks of the disowned on a family tapestry, and he clenches his jaw and balls his fists because now he’s a disappointment, a dullard and let-down, a goddamn freak with laser eyes—

He thinks this is what his brother must have felt.

* * *

There’s a war—

Well, not exactly a  _war_ , but the tail beginnings of one that is frighteningly close to the tales of one his brother reputedly helped stop.

It had been human versus mutant then. Now, round two had been led by an egoistic, magical blue Skittle and his four henchmen; it had now been mutant versus mutants.

Now, Scott is a part of the task-force “First Class 2.0,” in a fight that will likely never be in any history textbook.

* * *

Life doesn’t exactly  _end_  after that war, no.

But it doesn’t really  _begin_ , either.

* * *

People hate him, of course.

There’d been picketed protests, hateful words spray-painted on the concrete walls of buildings and down alleyways, and suspicious, condescending glances whilst in public. Scott has heard words, been the victim of offenses extra  _disparaging_ , slurs extra  _derogatory_ , like they think he’s actually capable of succumbing to an emotion as selfish as  _shame_.

And he is.

It’s felt every time he has to look in the mirror, and every time he has to roll out of bed and put on those outlandish ruby shades or else burn a hole through the ceiling.

Scott knows the world hates him now. He’s dangerous, a loose, loaded canon, grenades encased inside a small teen. He’s a lost boy missing his late older brother and the loving embrace of his parents and the affection of old friends. He cries to be normal. He screams for self-acceptance.

Yet still Scott sports name brand jackets, manages his hair in the morning, and slides on his trainers before leaving. He’s mastered the lovable smirk and how to redirection morose attention. He knows how to put up a front and uses a sharp tongue as a defense mechanism.

It’s almost a year since that war and everything is new. Everyone has emerged metamorphosed. So far Scott’s diminishing meeting with his family have quickly been refilled with the time of those at the Gifted School, many who no longer have a family to go home to.

6,570 hours. 273 days. Nine months.

Everything has changed, yet somehow Scott remains ultimately plain and ordinary. He’s still a step-too-slow of reaction time, still fumbles when he’s lying, speaks before he thinks far enough and is still awkward around girls—the pretty kind, the ones with long hair and mascara eyelashes and puckered, kissable lips and a darting glare.

It’s the kind of awkwardness that comes from embarrassment and infatuation, pride and shame—

 _Shame_.

It’s the different kind of awkwardness—unlike the kind coming from running face to face with one who he had hoped, had been so sure would remain in his past.

Shame is a perfect adjective. It is arctic cold and electrifying, the pale pastel of a carefully sown skirt ripping in front of an audience, and melting off-white vanilla on a sidewalk. He’s shameful because that’s the overwhelming emotion he feels with these clunky, ruby shades that  _might as well be glued to his face_  like a shining, directing scarlet beacon that screams  _misfit_.

It’s almost a year since Scott Summers had been enrolled in Xavier’s School for the Gifted, and since that apocalyptic battle ended. It’s been almost a full year of healing, recollecting, and finding a new self-assurance. And right now, in the right side of the aisle in one of the local malls, Scott Summers hadn’t felt so  _small_  until now.

Nine months after winning a battle against the apocalypse, a crisp, guilt-embossed excuse of a reunion happens at the New York mall. Scott wonders if the anxiety will make his breakfast rise up, like it had for Kurt two weeks before when been interrogated.

Shame is the sweeping, high cheekbones, chapped lips, and the open-jaw look of alarm that is plastered on the girl in the knee-lengthed red sundress. She is the girl he never got to reconcile or take on a date, and who understandably looks like she’s looking at a ghost. And he begins wondering if he could donate his body for science when he’ll excuse himself to the public restroom, and if he could donate whatever blood is left in his veins and not on the tile floor to a charity or war orphans.

Scott swallows.

He feels so small and so alone, a fledgling left out in a deadly snowstorm.

He awaits her scorching slander.

The girl had been in many of his classes over his short years in normal high school.  _That_  necessarily wasn’t the problem. No, not so much as it was the burly blonde who is unhooking his arm from around her and is turning, menacingly slow, to loom over Scott. Then the mutant has become that scared little boy again like he was back when his mutation first surfaced; back when he was cowering in the restroom stall, shaken to the very core as the realization hit that life as he knew it had been completely turned upside down, blasting this same blonde against that restroom sink and Scott’s eyes burning the school’s walls and ceiling.

And it is the same blonde who is standing before him now. And then Scott is the same scared little boy.

There isn’t any turning away because they’ve seen each other—here, out in the open, outside the comfort of Xavier’s, out here to be judged and persecuted in all Scott’s mutant glory.

Scott doesn’t speak. He fidgets; his hands are sweating.

The blonde is squaring his shoulders, lip drawing back in a sneer. He still radiates confidence and dominance and hostility.

Scott feels his muscles tightening, readying to sprint.

Out here he’s so alone, so pinpointed, and so  _exposed_  that he could swear that his soul leaves his body.

The girl there looks between the two.

Scott’s palms are sweating, his ruby-red vision is spinning, and he wants to pull his hair out, wants sprint, wants to  _die_ —

The girl’s expression changes to—what? Relief? Happiness? Something  _weird_? He blinks in surprise as her arms are thrown around his neck in a hug. She’s  _excited_ to see him…?

She smiles, asks attentively how he has been. His answer is stuttered and pathetic.

Jubilation and another mutant from Xavier’s school, Nelson, are behind Scott and are watching awkwardly.

Scott’s former classmate straightens when her plausible boyfriend moves menacingly closer. Scott instinctively takes a step back.

On any other time, everything would have been perfect—seeing a good acquaintance of his with a pair of his new friends. If only it wasn’t for the looming gorilla in front of Scott, silently threatening, silently scheming. Thus, this reunion is short-lived, semisweet, and sour. The blonde cracks a crocodile smile and grumbles a “hey mutee” because he thinks he’s going to get a reaction from his possible girlfriend, to gain a look of shock or disgust, and she’d wrinkle her nose, turn away, and he’d sling his arm around her shoulders and  _chuckle_  because this is so, so much better and feeds his ego to maximal sum. Yet to his disappointment, her look of disinterest is directed towards  _him_  before she turns back to Scott to carry on a full-fledged conversation as if he is invisible beside her. Scott’s vision swims from anxiety; he’s never dreamed of meeting back with her and much less the  _physical contact_  he once daydreamed about.

It’s all blissfully nostalgic and it’s reminiscent.

Scott wishes he hadn’t come at all.

The  _drop_  in her maybe-boyfriend’s expression and his look of utter betrayal doesn’t set Scott at ease, fearing that he would lash at the teen in a way seen victim of any non-normal human.

The blonde has an arm raised as if he’d been preparing to do something—to pull his girlfriend away, fist Scott’s collar—and his expression is window-wide open when he registers that she is serious and of her rooted resolve. And Scott’s worried because he remembers that the other is older, broader, taller, even more-so than he probably remembers.

But the blonde is staring at  _her_. Waits for  _her_  move.

But then his gaze—bitter and ominously starless—is narrowing, flattening, darting from her smokey black-painted eyes and her blush-dusted cheeks to the chewed ruins of her inner lips.

“ _What_?” she snaps, tossing her hair back. “Was I speaking to you? Stop acting like a child who can’t leave me alone for _five minutes_.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, furrows his brow,  _blinks_ , and then blinks again, and then levels her with a grimace that’s as pained as it is irritated. She wonders if he’s going to complain again about her choices not aligning with his. Or if he’s going to ruin this. Or if he’s going to pretend nothing’s wrong.  _“Why are you talking to it?”_  would be the cruelest question he could ask, that she thinks up.

“Your face will stay like that forever if you don’t fix it,” she challenges.

Scott is stunned as well as terrified at her valor. He never had guts to speak to his old bully that way.

The blonde flaps his mouth open and closed, pulling out a reaching comeback to which he is promptly instructed to go isolate himself. He jumps at Scott, a jerk of his shoulders in a faulty show of dominance and meant as a fear tactic, and then grumbles, “watch it, Summers,” bumping the other’s shoulder.

Too afraid to look behind, Scott keeps his eyes trained on the girl’s in front of him. When she stops following the brutish young man behind Scott, her face brightens. She informs Scott that the other has gone, and the mutant visibly relaxes.

“Are you really dating that guy?”

She raises her left shoulder in a guilt shrug. “I wouldn’t call it dating. He wants to though,” she ends with a sigh. “Not a chance.”

“Oh… Because I just though with his arm—-”

“He drives a nice car and he has a cousin in accounting.”

For connections only.

Scott mouths a silent  _“ohh.”_

“When did you start wearing glasses?”

“A, uh, a little after I left school.” He rolls his shoulders, tries to calm and appear lax. “Prescription. It was a medical emergency. Could have gone blind, or something like that.”

She nods, mouths a silent understanding. “I heard of that. When you left.” And she juts her chin in the direction of the store Scott’s old school bully had disappeared inside. “He had been there too.”

And in that moment Scott goes cold again. He swallows, his throat suddenly dry. “He told you that?” It doesn’t hold any firmness he hoped and instead sounds more like a low squeak.

She nods. She’s no longer holding him and is instead plucking at bits of lint on the skirt of her dress. “The whole school knows, Scott. They still haven’t completely fixed that bathroom sink either.” A chuckle punctuates her sentence, but when she looks up again, she sees his brows are drawn, wearing an expression she can’t exactly read.

There is no clarification needed for her words. She knows as well as he that being a mutant is like having a scarlet mark on your forehead for harassment, a target on your back for discrimination, that one can be ostracized and disowned for showing a trait as minimal as a split, purple tongue.

“You’ve become kind of a legend though!” she tries, and Scott ducks his head, rubs his eye with his fingers. She tries to back-step and lifts the mood. “Scott you aren’t a bad person. …What about that guy who came and picked you up? You guys look alike. That’s your brother, right? What about—-”

“He’s dead.”

Her jaw closes and tightens.

A couple walks past, pushing a child’s stroller. A young couple hold hands, the girl bumping shoulders with the guy much taller than she.

Scott’s ex-classmate puffs her cheeks, it now her turn to feel bad. “I’m…gosh, I’m sorry…”

He lifts his head, sniffs, hands disappearing in his pockets. “Don’t be. No one could have done anything.”

“Yeah…” She nods.

Jubilee and Nelson have played six games of rock-paper-scissors and three rounds of thumb-war.

The girl of Scott’s old school bites her bottom lip where her light red lipstick stops. She had gotten a new pair of glasses two months ago that, she thinks, looks much better on her dark skin.

The air between her and Scott has changed.

She pats his shoulder. “Hey. I know we never talked much then but…” She takes his hands in hers. She’s going her best to amend. “Being a mutant doesn’t make you a waste or a bad person. It…um, it just shows a whole new  _world_  of possibilities…at least in my opinion. You’re still the same Scott. …And—-though—-since—-I never lost anyone before I can’t relate to that… But for other things, if you ever want someone to talk to…”

His hands begin to warm. His hands feel like the underside of his jeans when sitting in cold weather. As she speaks, they begin to warm, humming, to a decent, cozy temperature. His hands warm as if he is placing them in front of a car heater, then, heating to around the coils of a stove top. Scott jerks his hands away for a moment to which she apologizes for. He looks down an sees that her bare brown hands hold a purple hue.

“…But if you ever do want someone to talk to who knows a little bit of what you’re going through…call me.”

Scott stares down the thin silver chain around her neck, to the mascara smudging under her right eye, to the crystal studs in her ears, to her polite smile, and back up to the few eyelashes that have clumped together. He stares and is overwhelmed. Because this is improbable— _impossible_ —and Scott stares, and he stares, and he stares, and he stares, and he—

She’s backing in the direction her ride home disappeared to. “I’ll see you around, Scott?”

He stares. There’s a slight rush of blood to his head, to his brain, that he almost doesn’t hear her departure. He awkwardly waves back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please **comment** and leave kudos if you like it. For any requests or asks, please shoot me a message on [my tumblr](http://aqhrodites.tumblr.com/).
> 
> This short fic is also posted on tumblr [here](http://aqhrodites.tumblr.com/post/156686907175/recondition).


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